Continued: Mansion

First Lady Rachel Hodges calls the mansion “a hard-working building,” one that is both a home to the first family and a tool used by the governor for developing relationships with people, from state legislators to industry prospects.

“The exhibit has an intellectual component, but it’s not information heavy,” said Herb Hartsook, SCPC director and organizer of the exhibit. “You can look at the exhibit in 15 minutes and come away with some good insights into what it might have been like to live in the mansion as governor or as a member of one of South Carolina’s first families.”

Katharine Klein, a master’s candidate in public history, worked on the exhibit. Klein came up with the exhibit’s design and selected quotes from the interviews while matching the text with photographs from the library’s collections of gubernatorial papers.

“This was a wonderful experience,” said Klein, who said she came away from her work on the exhibit with a sense that the politicians who have occupied the mansion are real people like everyone else. “The exhibit gives visitors a chance to see a side of the families that they probably haven’t seen.”